Category Archives: REITs

There are two distinct parts to the latest, just released research note from JPM's quant "wizard" Marko Kolanovic. In the first part, the infamous predictor of market swoons takes on an unexpectedly cheerful demeanor, and explains why contrary to his recent market outlooks, near-term risks for a market selloff appear to have abated. First, he […]

With a record 8,640 retail stores expected to close in 2017, American malls are desperate to draw in customers as America’s retail apocalypse leaves them littered with empty store fronts. Now, some are experimenting with a model that worked for some movie theaters: Invest in restaurants and popular amenities like rock-climbing walls to sell customers […]

Well that escalated quickly… This morning's Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods Market has collapsed share prices of many grocers (in US and around the world), pharmacies and drug distributors, and even REITs… First things first, 11 of the top 12 biggest losers in the S&P 500 are related to AMZN's move… It's a bloodbath […]

We are having a hard time finding high-quality companies at attractive valuations. For us, this is not an academic frustration. We are constantly looking for new stocks by running stock screens, endlessly reading (blogs, research, magazines, newspapers), looking at holdings of investors we respect, talking to our large network of professional investors, attending conferences, scouring […]

With the great retail bankruptcy tsunami claiming its latest victim on Thursday, when Gymboree announced it wouldn’t make its June 1 interest payment guaranteeing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the next month, the signs continue to mount that the next “big short” – either in the form of REITs, CMBS, CMBX, or single name […]

One month ago, we first presented several striking charts and observations from Credit Suisse’s retail analyst, Christian Buss, who showed the extent of the devastation sweeping through the US retail sector. To be sure, while the mass shuttering of retail stores – just today Michael Kors announced the company would close up to 125 full-price […]

It has been a painful, bruising intellectual exercise for BofA’s HY credit strategist Michael Contopoulos, who after starting off 2016 uber-bearish, was – together with every other money manager and advisor – taken to the woodshed, and forced to flip bullish, kicking and screaming, and advising BofA clients to buy the same junk bonds he […]

In an otherwise quiet session in which European shares dropped, Asian equities rose and S&P500 futures were little changed, crude oil surged above $49 on high volume, after the Saudi and Russian energy ministers said in Beijing they favor extending the OPEC production cut for 9 months, though the end of Q1 2018. WTI rose […]

Forget the “great rotation” out of bonds into stocks: 6 months into the so-called reflation trade, which so many strategists predicted would unleash a new era of euphoric stock buying driven by bond sales, it just isn’t happening; in fact bonds have seen fund inflows on 17 of the last 18 weeks. Instead, two other […]

“Thousands of new doors opened and rents soared. This created a bubble, and like housing, that bubble has now burst.” – Richard Hayne, Urban Outfitters CEO, March 2017 The devastation in the US retail sector is accelerating in 2017, and in addition to the surging number of brick and mortar […]